Reading Assignment 1

Magazine:Popular Photography
Issue: October 2008 Volume 72, NO. 10

Summary: I read an article that had tips from a professional photographer. This article is about tips that can help someone while shooting extreme sports. It said that the best way to shoot extreme sports is to depict all the stages of an aerial stunt with a sequence. The first tip was to plan a peak for action which means that you have to plan to shoot at the movement top of visual impact. Even if you work closely with the athlete to plan the trick you don't really know what is going to happen so you have to plan ahead.

The next tip is to use a fast, wide angle lens. The extremely wide angle also helps spread the stunt across the sky, which made each part of the sequence more distinct and easier to assemble in the photo that was shown by the article. Next you are suppose to shoot in shutter priority or manual mode. Since freezing in extreme sports is tough you should start in shutter priority mode and run tests to ensure proper sharpness. Next is fire in bursts, five frames per second is about the minimum you need to capture enough images for a sequence, athough depending on the sport or trick. You may be able to get away with a slower capture depending on what sport you are shooting and how extreme the sport is.

Next, is sequence by hand, the article talks about using photoshop in the pictures that are shown. It says that the person that wrote the article used the lasso tool to cut the rider in the picture loosely from the important frames. With feathering of the selection, most of them just paste right in but sometimes there is overlap or there needs to be adjusting of the backround. The writer of the article said that "There are so many variations in the photos, so its all done by hand.